Key to the Door

Seaton #2

by Alan Sillitoe

An existential saga of working-class life in a British factory town and military service in the torrid jungles of the Far East from award-winning, bestselling author Alan SillitoeKey to the Door turns away from the boisterous pursuits of Arthur Seaton made infamous in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning , and focuses instead on the quieter rebellions of his older brother, Brian. Brian’s childhood and adolescence in the grimy streets of Nottingham are shaped by the Depression-era struggles of his family, the life and culture of the factory town, and the love and bullying of his iron-willed grandfather and erratic father. When Brian reaches adulthood, he frequents the local pubs, works hard at a cardboard factory, and runs into a sticky situation with a woman named Pauline that obliges him to marry her. Soon though, he is conscripted for the postwar occupation of Malaya, and his true colors begin to show. Brian declares that he only wears his uniform to collect his paycheck; he shows contempt for the soldiers who obey the rules; he pursues a relationship with an exotic Chinese dancer; and he sends poetry into the jungle in Morse code. At once a vivid family portrait and a study of “the desolate, companionless void of protest” prevalent in postwar England, Key to the Door establishes the Seaton Novels as a broad and sweeping saga of twentieth-century British life, set against the backdrop of Nottingham. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alan Sillitoe including rare images from the author’s estate.

Genres: Fiction, Literature

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Alan Sillitoe was an English writer, one of the "Angry Young Men" of the 1950s (although he, in common with most of the other writers to whom the label was applied, had never welcomed it).
For more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sil...

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite book of all time. Period. This guy speaks to me, and for me.

[Iris Evelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it, but I definitely preferred the Nottingham side of things over the Malaya side. Having said that, I did like how Malaya was presented in it. It didn't have much of a plot, but was very character-driven, more so than Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Brian is much more likeable than Arthur. He seems to actually care about the people around him in a way that Arthur never did, and the world and the people it contains seems much more developed in this book.

[Илия Михайлов · Rating 5 out of 5]

Не помня последният път, когато четох хартиена книга. Може би минаха няколко години. Оттогава до днес литературата, която прекарвам през душата, ума и сърцето си, е чрез моя киндъл.
Причината да посегна отново към т.нар. "хартиен носител" бе обстоятелството, че книгата, която исках да препрочета, я нямаше в електронен вариант.
Гледахме се с нея известно време. По-точно тя ме наблюдаваше с любопитство, полегнала уморено върху стелажа на библиотеката. Питаше ме сякаш какво стана с онзи "юноша бледен", който бях преди двадесет години, когато затворих последната ѝ страница, опитвайки се да осмисля какво е посланието ѝ към мен.
Като че ли чакаше кога най-после ще реша да посегна към нея отново.
Приближих се тихо един ден и я взех нежно в ръцете си. Разтворих пожълтелите ѝ страници, вдишах аромата им. Усетих как тупти сърцето ѝ. Чух как ми нашепва мъдростта, стаена в нея. Почувствах нетърпението ѝ да сподели с мен всичко, което пази между кориците си толкова дълго време.
Осъзнах за пореден път, че приключението с хартиената книга не се състои само от буквите, подредени в послушно строени изречения. То е всичко, което можем да уловим със сетивата си...дори нещо повече.
С тези чувства прочетох отново "Ключ за вратата" след близо двадесет години.
Продължавам да вярвам, че е много важно на каква възраст се срещаме с дадена книга. От това зависи колко ще успеем да вземем от нея за себе си, колко ще можем да поберем в душевната си раница, да съпреживеем и почувстваме. По тази причина вярвам, че има смисъл от препрочитането на книгите.
От дистанцията на времето си давам сметка чак сега защо Силитоу е бил толкова предпочитан за превод от социалистическата литературна общественост. Това е заради левите му комунистически убеждения, заради които се превръща в знаме, развявано с огромно удоволствие от тоталитарните режими.
Иначе това е една история, която започва в предградието на Нотингам Радфорд и завършва в джунглите на Малая. Историята на един млад човек, който търси любовта, щастието и справедливостта - ключът за вратата на своя живот.
Кой знае защо, но се сещам за времето, когато бях дете и носех ключа от вкъщи с връзка на врата си. Без да подозирам за смисъла на метафората, която може да бъде всичко това.
Финалът на книгата е с послание.
"А след като човек има ключа за вратата, трябва само да напрегне мускулите си и да я отвори. Но няма да се учудя, ако се окаже, че за да успее, ще са нужни още толкова много години"
Остава само всеки от нас да разбере дали ключът за неговата врата е само един, или някъде някой пази втори.

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 4 out of 5]

With The Uses of Literacy, Richard Hoggart published in 1957 an enduring and important history of the English working class. It is also an idealized and even romantic view of the working class as a virtuous community with its own extended customs and heritage. Then, in 1958, Alan Sillitoe came out with what is probably his most memorable and important novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. It tells the story of Arthur Seaton, a violent and impulsive man of 22 years who works at a lathe in a bicycle factory. It flips on its head the cheerful morally upright world that Hoggart writes about. Violence, sexual betrayal, and a rejection of the system fill its pages, although it manages something of an optimistic ending.

The Seatons are back in the Key to the Door, this time with the story focusing on Brian Seaton, Arthur's older brother. And Brian is a much harder case than Arthur ever was. Growing up in the Depression, with an illiterate, constantly out of work father, Brian himself spends time at the garbage dump, ferreting out whatever might be valuable--often, it's nothing more than wooden kindling that can be repackaged and sold for the most meagre of amounts. The Seatons and everyone else in their Nottingham neighborhood survive on the slimmest of margins, cheating when they can, doing desperate dirty and dangerous work when it falls to them. Sillitoe's is a bleak story that actually is made better with the coming of World War II and full time work at decent wages. That is the story we get of Brian, an avowed Stalinist who unironically envisages the eventual victory of worldwide communism.

Brian remains a communist throughout the book, a point of view endorsed by Sillitoe. His courtship and eventual marriage doesn't change his mind. Neither does his enlistment and assignment as a radio operator to Malaya during the Emergency, when a communist insurgency arose to disrupt Britain's planned independence for what would become Malaysia. Again, Brian is a piece of work, siding with the insurgents and cheating on his wife with a Singaporean born mistress. For all his political idealism, Brian is as amoral as they come. Sillitoe seems to write this off as nothing more than a stage in life, allowable as long as Brian retains his political commitment. And so there is your happy ending.

The form of this novel breaks away from a linear format. It opens with the Seatons being dislodged from their home in order to make way for military usage and then flashes back to Brian's birth. Later, the book's midpoint reaches the beginning of the war and then flashes forward (and then back again) to Brian's service in Malaya. The structure is complex, almost epic, albeit maintaining its connections with clarity and subtlety. But what can't be escaped is the overwhelming destitution of the pre-war years and the continuing anger about exploitation and ruthless nature of the system's ruling class in making its working people expendable.

One little thing did nag at me. Brian was a fan of Tarzan and Jungle Jim, he says, in the days before the war. I was sure that Sillitoe had got this wrong. For I remember Johnny Weismuller starring in a series of Jungle Jim movies that began in the late Forties, after Weismuller became too fat for his Tarzan suit. So I double checked. Sillitoe, of course, remembered correctly. I didn't know about the 1937 serial that ran in twelve installments in theaters. Now, I'll have to get hold of it.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not Sillitoe's best book for sure. The details are amazing - as ever - but there's no sharpness, no direction where all this life goes.

[Peter Coomber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I much prefer Alan Sillitoe's short, anarchic stories - such as Guzman, Go Home or The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner - to this novel. However, it has to be said that this book is probably his best work. More consistant than his breakthrough novel Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, it's a long, story that doesn't flag for a moment in its telling. He is at his most D H Lawrence-like in this story (although, I have to admit to not getting beyond page 40 of The Rainbow, so what would I know?)
'Lenton Alan' recounts the early life of a Nottingham boy up to his twenty-first year; writing about exotic places, such as Canning Circus and Bobber's Mill Bridge - ha-ha! Possibly, in parts, autobiographical. His own grandfather was a farrier for the colliery, mirroring the character Merton, and he had written about his own early life - with his father flitting from house to house to avoid the rent man, which appear in this story too.
If you like long, well-written stories about people involved in ordinary life, then this is a book for you - although, personally, I prefer his shorter, more anarchic stories...


August 2024: I thought I might struggle to read it again, having read it last only two years ago, but I was OK with it. Enjoyable but not in my top ten books (not even my top hundred).

[Saleh Razzouk]

It is loosely narrated. Can be better. His best in this series is The Open Door. I can see in it the outer and inner sides of the main character who came back from military to civil life. Love is peppering it. The romantic love not bodily and material one. Though we feel the warmth of both- body and heart.